Wow. It’s already Tuesday and I’m still recovering from last week. I’ve been laying low for the last six months or so, writing a few (OK, quite a few) blog entries on SQL Server 2008 topics. But I’d really been working on my next SQL Server course (on 2008, of course), that premiered last week as part of a program known as SQL Server 2008 Jumpstart.

Simon Sabin (the newest SQLskills associate) and I presented to a good-sized crowd of Microsofties and trainers from everywhere. We did the developer track; there were also DBA and BI tracks by my well-known SQLskills associates. You’ll see this course in a lot of different venues in the next few months, but it won’t always be us that’s doing the presenting. Just so many places we can be at once…

We covered everything from new T-SQL features to Spatial Data and Indexes and everything in-between. In addition to the SQL Server features, there was an entire day devoted to client APIs and dev tools; not only ODBC (yes, I did an ODBC demo in C++) and ADO.NET, but also the Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services, Occasionally Connected Apps.

So, for the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing down my thoughts on questions (some of them rather pointed) that arose about the topics we presented. Some of the post will be facts, answers to questions…but they’ll be some opinion pieces as well (marked with MHO, that’s my humble opinion).